


Insiders and Outsiders: Who's Who?

by yourlibrarian



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Fantasy Football, Gen, Journalism, Meta, Sports, Work Contains Fan(s) or Fandom(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6834394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sportswriter's rant about fantasy football reveals that there are more similarities between media and sports fandom than one might think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insiders and Outsiders: Who's Who?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted August 25, 2005

A link posted on fanthropology caught my attention. It's by a Sports Illustrated writer complaining about fantasy football. Although I have no part in sports fandom, there seemed to be a lot of familiar things going on in his rant. I'm applying these points primarily to the Buffyverse since that's what I currently know about, but I suspect that there's truth there for a number of fandoms.

 **First**

_"Rather than watching a game in its context and meaning to the standings, fantasy folks often ignore the big picture, focusing only on how their players are performing around the league."_   
The first thing I thought of was shipper wars, or even ship-fic. The larger stories are stripped away to be tighly focused on a pair (maybe trio) of characters. 

**Second**

_It glorifies stat accumulators at the expense of team players_.   
This seems to me relevant to the overall popularity (or lack thereof) of certain characters in canon. Some characters are not supposed to be the main focus of the story, but they become so because of their popularity _in the fandom_. This leads to character wars where people complain that characters have too much or too little screen time. It can also mean the growing influence of "cool" characters as opposed to the less flashy ones. I find it a curious coincidence that I read this article today at the same time that a [Nick Brendon interview](http://www.backstage.com/backstage/features/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001021116) has him saying: 

_I didn't know what the character was anymore. I just felt like I was stagnating as an actor, too, and I thought, "Is this what it's gonna be my whole life?"...Because after about Season Five on [Buffy], or the end of Season Four, I was that guy. [Buffy creator] Joss [Whedon] actually said Xander was done--that there was no more. I was just kind of relegated to the background. It was one of those things that, where I was at in my life, the money was more important than my pride or taking care of myself. [Leaving], especially as the show's just starting to take off..._

I would argue that his character was one of those "team players" that got less attention as time went on. And I think it's true that within fandom the ensemble of characters is often de-emphasized in favor of particular favorites, where fan production and discussion turns on (mostly) a few cool characters. Thus the dearth of gen fic or readership for less popular character fic.

 **Third**

_It makes heroes out of problem children_   
I think I can point to the never-ending controversy about Spike for that one, although there's apparently controversy over the glorification of vampires generally within the fandom and within fanfic.

 **Fourth**

_Sorry, but we have a name for people whose primary source of entertainment stems from stuff that didn't really happen. They're called Trekkies._   
This isn't just an outsider's viewpoint. I think the most recent kerfluffles going on in HP fandom after the latest book release shows that there are plenty of people within a fandom who look around at times and go "WTF, it's just a [fill in the blank]!"

 **Fifth**

_The death of the NFL offseason...Whatever happened to the quaint notion that you can't miss something if it never really goes away?_   
Certainly Internet fandom has made the idea of an international, 24/7, 'blink and you've missed it' fandom something that couldn't have existed 20 years ago. Anyone ever cringe at the idea of catching up on their flist after they've been gone, oh, 3 or 4 days?

 **Sixth**

_Defense still wins championships in real-life football. But in the fantasy game, defenders are bit players, in place only to be scored upon by all those coveted offensive stars._  
While this may seem like Point 2, I'd say it's actually a bit different. I would argue that this applies to how people not only focus fan production on certain characters but also want canon to be changed to do the same. This ignores the fact that in canon a lot of what works happens because of a balance of things (storylines, character participation, other arcs). If fan wishes played out, the canon might no longer function in the way that attracted many people in the first place. (I'll cite Joss' hotly debated "Give them what they need not what they want" quote).

 **Seventh**

_All those confusing and divided loyalties_   
I'd argue that his point here relates to actor fandom. You like Actor A in X project. You then start watching other shows that Actor A appears in -- not because you have any interest in it, or care if the show continues or not, but because you want to see Actor A. (In fact, maybe you just want to see Actor A employed, so that they don't decide to give up, go back to school and become a lit professor).

 **Eighth**

_The expert phenomena. Fantasy football transforms average fans into quasi-general managers_   
In other words, the fandom's Monday morning quarterbacking becomes more important than the game itself. I'd say sites like Television Without Pity, where people who don't even _watch_ the shows go to read about them, is a direct comparison.

 **Ninth**

_Money tends to corrupt a thing or two in this world_   
To me this was an interesting point because I don't see it discussed much, but some people involved in fandom do manage to "support their habit" by becoming dealers or getting into the "collectibles" game, by using fandom as a springboard to professional projects (including academia), or by getting some money on the side in things like fan art. For the most part, making money off of fan production is very unusual because of its uneven legal status and the social no-no that that risk entails for others. But making money off of other fans seems to be a valid option in other ways, such as resale of official merchandise, or organizing conventions. I think there is a bit of a no-man's-land when fans become a type of producer themselves -- neither firmly on the side of officialdom, nor completely in the fan camp. I don't know as too many fans become screenwriters or directors, but I suspect a lot more go into auxiliary industries such as merchandising, gaming, comics, books and (more on this in a bit) journalism.

 **Tenth**

_The trendiness of it all_   
Is it trendy to be a fan these days? Maybe in some ways. I mean video games are an extremely popular pastime, as are RPGs, and these overlap with things like media and sports fandoms where debate and wank are the order of the day. I think it may depend on what you define as a fan activity. For example, I would argue with the SI writer that he should have put #9 first on his list. As little as I know about it, I am fairly sure that money is a major reason for the popularity of fantasy sports. In part this is because (A) Money is a useful thing in the real world, and anything that can potentially make money gets someone's interest, and (B) Money's usefulness also serves to disguise and legitimize other rationales for being involved. If someone asks why you are involved in [name your fandom/hobby/crackpot interest] you don't say "Because I love it, and it interests me, and it's fun to spend time on it, even if realistically it's not a very important thing in the scheme of things." You instead say, "Dude, I made $2K on it last year and I love the _competition_." No further explanation needed.

 **Ok, so what?**

Aside from how well this guy mapped out some major issues in fandoms generally, I thought it was interesting that he felt compelled to rail against this issue. And it seemed to me this was because he’s someone on the semi-official side of sports, someone who makes his living at it, and he feels these elements of fandom delegitimize his profession. As he's pointing out, this huge segment of sports fandom is not in it for the game. It's not in it for the artistry, the skill, the achievement, or whatever else it is that a sports event is actually supposed to be about. Fandom uses the object (football in this case) for its own purposes. 

In comparison to the sports journalist, the owners of teams and the leagues (the networks and studios) don't care one way or another what fandom uses the object for as long as they consume it and provide a profit to its owners. But I bet the players (the writers, actors, production team) do. They still want to be able to make a living at it, but most of them probably also take their craft seriously. And they want to be recognized for that. Sports writers are _professional fans_ who probably got into it because they did admire the craft and maybe even participated in it at one time. I would say critics and media journalists are in the same place, and many of them find it incredibly frustrating that large numbers of people do not seem to admire or reward good television or thoughtful film making or substantive music. Worse, sometimes even the “smart” audience doesn’t necessarily like it for “the right reasons" or are missing what it's "supposed to be all about". 

Although he didn't say it I suspect that another phrase the SI writer might use is "it cheapens the game." Which is pretty funny, really, because a game is, well, a game. And to people who aren't interested in sports OR in fantasy sports, none of it means anything. Its only meaning is in what someone is willing to invest in it emotionally. Its only reality is in its emotional value, nothing more. Without that currency, no one would be able to make a dime off of it, not him, not the players, not the owners. So in essence what he's saying to fantasy players is that "your feelings are not as important, as meaningful, as invested, as mine, and that's scary." 

I suspect that having both a financial and emotional stake in sports, as he does, is a fragile place to be since his position is precisely dependent on being in the middle of two sides over which he has no control, and neither of which really shares his point of view. To the inside players he's an outsider. Now he feels he's an outsider among the fans as well. 

I want to add two last points. The first is that I've seen this same boundary issue at cons, and I find it fascinating to watch. Cons are an intersection of the various elements -- production, auxiliary services, and fans, all there for their own purposes but never really connecting except among their own groups. There's this uneasy dance that is carried out and it seems to me that part of that unease is the imbalance of currencies -- emotional and financial -- which take place there. (This is not to cast aspersions on anyone's particular con experience, it was just my own reaction to them).

The second point is the issue of reality/fantasy. The first thing I thought of was fiction versus non-fiction readers, and how some people refuse to read any kind of fiction. They consider it frivolous and a waste of time because it's "all made up." (Which doesn't mean these people don't read, these comments came from surveys of 'heavy readers’). It seems to me that there's also a boundary intersection among (A) people who seem incapable of any kind of emotional investment in imagination, (B) those whose main emotional investment is in the imaginary, and (C) those who fall in between. 

The way I read it, the SI writer was realizing his emotional investment was more realistically grounded than he had thought. The fantasy players, by comparison, were using the players and games as _symbolic objects_ rather than as _actual objects_ , and incorporating them into scenarios and roles that had greater value to them than the settings and roles designated for them by their producers (one which the journalists buy into). And this behavior reminds me of fan skirmishes over the issues of AUs and OOC arguments. To fantasy sports players, the athletes are essentially paper dolls, flat and with shallow characterization (their stats) as opposed to their various other aspects. And non-AU fans complain that this trivializes the characters, that it overlooks many things in canon, and that this is _not who the characters are_. But rather than seeing this as a boundary issue it seems to the participants to become a kind of moral issue, where there are rights and wrongs rather than different uses of a (virtual) material that has been thrown out into the marketplace. And I think this all has to do with discomfort about identities of self and community, but that is definitely a topic for another day.


End file.
